Standard Life is braced for a tense annual shareholder meeting this month
after an influential good governance group urged investors to veto the
insurer’s executive pay.

Pirc, which advises pension funds with more than £1.5 trillion in assets,
complained that remuneration at the Edinburgh group was “excessive”. It
highlighted combined awards made to Keith Skeoch, chief executive of
Standard Life Investments, which it said amounted to more than 750 per cent
of his base salary. It also objected to a change in performance targets for
executives’ long-term incentive schemes, which are now linked solely to
increased operating profits.